Twentieth-Century Human Biology—Nourishment

In the late eighteenth century a biological metamorphosis occurred in the inhabitants of developed countries, one that Robert Fogel has called a “technophysio evolution.”² This occurred in fits and starts. At first it mainly concerned the upper classes of Europe and the United States, but later, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the lower classes of these areas experienced it as well. Finally, over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it also concerned people in comparatively poor countries.

In premodern countries, even wealth provided no great protection from death—it was not until the early eighteenth century that the British/English royal family began living longer than the island’s average inhabitant.³ This even applied to malnutrition—their diets could be quite low on vitamins⁴—an ailment to which they were even more susceptible than the inhabitants of the remote villages…

The revolution in living standards was caused by five factors: (1) a rise in material wealth, (2) the development of medicine, (3) the promotion of hygiene through better education, the development of the public health infrastructure, and (4) and (5), food storage and transportation technologies.

While the exact impact of genetic and environmental factors on the body remains debatable,⁵ we have no doubt about the negative impact of malnutrition on development, especially in children and infants. In pre-Revolution France, the caloric intake was around 1,850 per head. In the 1930s, it was almost 3,000 calories, and fifty years later, almost 3,500.⁶

At the close of the eighteenth century, much of French society—around a fifth— had only enough energy to stay alive, not to work effectively. A poor diet also stunted the average height, which came to around 163 centimeters in the adult male.⁷ Of course, the kingdom of Louis XVI was no shameful exception—in agrarian societies, ordinary people’s lot mainly improved through neighbors dying in plagues or war, making fewer “mouths to feed.”⁸ Yet the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought steady improvement, adding almost ten centimeters to the average French male height.

In Poland, the height of conscripts rose from 166 cm (1899–1905) to 178 cm (for those born in 1991).⁹ Moreover, this general trend, based on data from the USA and interwar Poland, was not impeded even by the Great Depression.¹⁰ Although League of Nations estimates of 1936 spoke of a disquieting level of 2,200 calories daily that were consumed by an uneducated worker in Poland…¹¹

Malnutrition among the poorer strata of society remains a problem, though in Europe it is fairly marginal—obesity has become more of an issue in the lower classes. “According to Central Statistical Office [GUS] data, in 2014 every other adult person (aged 15+) in Poland has a problem with body weight. This phenomenon occurs more often among men; 62% of men were overweight or obese, and 46% of women.”¹²